Heads In Beds Show - How To Build Trust For Guests To Want To Book On Your Vacation Rental Website

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, Conrad and Paul emphasize that building trust and security is essential for successful vacation rental direct booking websites, crucial for both attracting guests and securing homeowner confidence. They discuss key factors including professional website design, the importance of social proof like guest reviews and trust badges, and the need for transparency and honesty in pricing, property details, and cancellation policies. The episode also highlights the significance of robust security features such as SSL certificates and secure payment processes, along with providing clear company information to foster approachability. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Head to Med Show presented by Buildup Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, what's going on? How's it going? level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, what's going on? How's it going?

Yeah, well, it's starting to warm up. It's, again, we get tricked into Minnesota thinking that 40 degrees is like 80. But yeah, it's is it feels a little more like spring or as we're recording. It's just wrapping up February here. So how are you doing, sir? How are things going in your neck of the woods? Yeah, same same here. I feel psychologically like it's it feels better when the weather is a little bit nicer outside and you hear more positive things. It looks like February was a little bit better demand month for a lot of our clients than January. I just wrote up our newsletter, as you can tell. So folks will be getting that probably. We'll get that before they hear this. But yeah, you know,

times the flat circle in that way. So yeah, all good from my perspective, don't really have any complaints necessarily. I think that it's, it's going to be a little bit of an up and down year. But I think that I feel a little more up this month than it was a little more down last month. But that's just how these things go. So you got to keep reacting to the way the game is unfolding in front of you and move on to the next thing as it were. Well, speaking of things moving on and figuring out the way that they should go or the way that things need to go, we thought this was an interesting topic. So we've touched on this one, you know, regularly throughout, but we've never done like a dedicated episode on this concept, even though it's been little bits and pieces and snippets of

what we talked about before. But two concepts, one's more psychological, maybe some of this is very practical stuff. Some of this is more like the perception that someone has of a brand or a company. But how do you build trust? And how do you build someone's feeling secure when booking on your direct booking website? And I think this is one of those conversations where without this, it's kind of like without this, we don't have the rest of the things that can work well.

So like, if people look at the brand, if people look at the vacation website, the direct booking site, and they don't trust it, they're gonna be so much more hesitant to take out their credit card and start punching in numbers, even if you do a lot of the other so-called tactics correctly. And I think this is something that a lot of typically smaller managers will fall into or new managers not realizing that they need to invest a lot of time, effort, energy and money into building something that is actually trustworthy. And we've talked about this before

as kind of like, some of this is like groundwork stuff. Some of this is like, in order to play the game, you have to go and build, you know, some of these initial pieces of the puzzle. And then only when that has been done and is complete, and you have some base level of effort already put in, then you can see better results. Or then you can see, you know, more solid pieces from there. So I think this will be a fun one. I think it applies to both the guest and the homeowner side. We could make some comments here about homeowner, how a homeowner trusting you with a million dollar home is a very high level of trust. And so it's not something so they do off one postcard. But what are your kind of thoughts on trust and, you know, security that these feelings and how it relates to kind of the branding and the guest demand and owner demand side of our

business? I think when we first started having this discussion, it took me back to some early days in the hospitality space working with some of these mom and pop fishing lodges up in Alaska. We're talking about a time where people, or Google's starting to prioritize mobile first and not worry about M.designs and stuff like that. And it was pretty easy to make a sale that this website, quite literally in the footer, says it hasn't been updated since 1998. Now, I don't think we have the egregious examples of that.

Like there have been at different times, but it is. I think we've all been on a website, whether it's a competitor, whether it's just someone who's in the space, whether we're travelers and looking to travel to a specific location. And it just doesn't hit the mark for a variety of reasons. And I wanna talk about a lot of those reasons here.

And I think this is, it's, you know, you can spend $20,000 a month on Google ads and not have it perform, not because you're not targeting the keywords or doing anything like that. It's because the website itself isn't giving a trusting experience, even overall positive experience. So it is. I think that this is something that there are people in this space who do it better than others, certainly. But knowing the small

tweaks you can make in order to bring your website up to this level that we level that we're talking about it is we're just talking about a standard level. We're not talking about going above and beyond this is this is truly these are the table stakes. So if you're not hitting in these areas, you know, maybe it's not everything across the board, but focusing on some specific, some specific characteristics we're talking about, I think should be should be a part of your roadmap here over the next 10 months as we're heading out of 2025. So yeah, I think I think it's gonna be a good of your roadmap here over the next 10 months as we're heading out of 2025. So yeah,

I think it's gonna be a good conversation here. Yeah. Yeah. So let's dive in. We've got some kind of topics, subtopic things to dive into. And I think this will be a good way to kind of break it down into these different components. And then we can talk about some of the pieces underneath it. So first, whether we like it or not, and you and I, I know Paul, they're not the designers, you know, you shouldn't listen to us for design advice. But you and I both learned over the years, and it speaks to that example you just gave the fishing lodge, the mom and pop fishing lodge, that the visual appeal and how it presents from a design aesthetic perspective matters a lot. And I think that's both, you know, fonts, colors, logos. I think it's also things like photo assets

and video assets. I think if having those done professionally, having those done at a high level, and then spending, you know, time to make sure those are very visible on the site throughout each and every page, not just the property detail page, but also homepages and things like that matters quite a bit. And I think that that's probably one of the first red flags that someone would have from a guest perspective as they go on the site. And it has a very poor basic or just not appealing

design. Again, a lot of that is somewhat subjective, but I think it's kind of like the old Supreme Court line where it's like, you know what, when you see it in reference to adult content. But in this case, it's kind of like professional design. You know when you see it. And I think that's the first place to start is like, yes, what's the expression?

Don't judge a book by its cover, but it's not true. People do judge a book by its cover and people do judge a vacation company by its homepage and by the subsequent design stuff they see past that. Right. So it's like, you could dislike it. You can say, oh, that's not fair. That's not right. But that's the reality of the situation. So yeah, starting there, just put it very plainly, like you need to

be investing into working with a great designer that will make the site look and feel very polished and professionally designed. And those pieces will lead you to the right outcome. So I don't know if you want to beat that up and go into a lot of detail, but your thoughts on just that design piece before we go further. If someone can like identify yourself, that's a WIC site, oh, that's a this site, or that you're probably missing missing

some of the marks there. Because if a different brand is usurping your brand, no, that's that's, oh, yes, that's your brand. But that's, that's obviously, you know, we're missing the mark there. So I think you hit the nail on the head, it is the adult content conversation of I can't put into words what it is, but I know it when I see it. And I know a good website when I see it. And I know a poor website experience when I see it. So I think design takes it three

quarters of the way there. The one thing that we can do a little more now is we as marketers, we can put in kind of the event tracking and all the other observation items and pieces that allow us to help the designers make what the data tells us are good decisions, not always with just the prettiest decision as well there. So, but yeah, let me hop into the social proof and validation. This is an area where not just on the, I mean, I think it's always important on the guest side. I think this takes on a whole nother level of value on the owner side of things.

Certainly on the verified guest review side of things, we've got the numbers now at 70% of consumers check reviews before purchasing, 88% trusting them as personal recommendations. Now that's something where social media has become much more to the forefront and Reddit, some of these other forums where people are looking for in a lot of different areas for that social proof and validation. So not just on your website, but being able to integrate some of those third party validations

in there as well. Responding to reviews, it seems so easy and straightforward, but you have to do it with that professional tact. I think that we've all seen those disastrous review responses that go viral for all the wrong reasons. And I just, it's one of those things where you do, timely responses, don't respond a year later. You know, make sure that you're giving someone a response in an appropriate amount of time and be professional. You may have a personal axe to grind, but grinding that axe on the world wide web just

never works out that well for you there. So I again, I think that that's something that should be pretty straightforward and logical. But we've all seen it out there. Anytime you're getting the, I go back to Beachball a lot, the best of Baldwin County, that's something that they take a lot of pride in. This is a company that was the property manager of the year and Beachball takes pride in the Baldwin County side of things. So really, finding ways, you know, you leverage it on the link building side as well, but find ways to highlight what you do really well. And if you're doing it well consistently in the local area,

if you're doing it at a national level, make sure that those certifications are in place, because even the Airbnb super hosts, the, you know, any of the higher levels that you can show that you've attained on the management side of things, certainly owners are looking for that. The owner reviews and the guest reviews. You want people who are not just talking about on the management side of things. Certainly owners are looking for that. The owner reviews and the guest reviews.

You want people who are not just talking about on the guest side, but they're talking about their experience with you on the owner side. Why they put their trust in you. Why they, you know, what they value. It might not be ROI for everybody. It might be the ability to have full access, have full control, have that peace of mind

that they are putting this $1 million asset in the hands of someone that they trust there. And certainly, if you can put those raw numbers, the one thing I love about those BizCorp sites is when they do, they kind of show the gross booking revenue over the last 12 months or something like that for some of these things. People like to see, on the owner side, they certainly like to see how much money you've earned. And on the guest side of things, they want to understand on the pricing, where kind of some of those things have gone as well. And then we've got trust badges here as well. So yeah, if you are talking about Burma, if you're talking about if you're a member of the local business bureau, if you're local community chamber, anything like that, those are those trusted icons that people are looking for

and can also be leveraged on the link building side. So what are your thoughts there? Yeah, no, I think you got to write on there. And I think it's like, again, the psychological bias that I would say is that fault here is that no one wants to be the guinea pig, right? No one wants to be the first person to be like, if they know they're not the first person to book direct,

they're already automatically gonna feel a little more comfortable. If you can see 500 examples of the fact that this person is book direct and so have these 800 other people, they've had all good experiences and okay, it's all look very good. And they can validate through other sources when they go on Google, they see a bunch of reviews that are all five stars, all these things, right? Is it one thing? No, like most things, it's a collection of accumulation of activities, accumulation of social proof. I think that really does the trick. So I think yeah, all those pieces that you talked about is is what is there. And I do agree Airbnb Superhost is something that to the guests that does make sense. So we can have a different debate different day about the value, the true value of that. And you know, if there's actually an algorithmic improvement to be made on Superhost, or how easy it is to game, but from the guest perspective, they see it, they've heard of Airbnb before in many situations, right? So when they see Airbnb, superhost, I wouldn't certainly be linking off

to Airbnb in that scenario. But a logo, a mention, hey, we've hosted X number of guests, hopefully X, X hundred guests, X thousand guests, that sort of thing. I think that's a great way to lean into the fact that yes, you've been there before, been there, done that, you know, got the got the t shirt. And I think that is what guests want to see. And that is what's lacking. I would say a lot of initial template sites I see is like they show the properties. And then this can be really problematic on some sites like ownerized sites do this, for example, you can't import reviews typically from previous, you know, PMS platforms. So it's like ownerized will only collect new reviews going forward. So if you're new to ownerize, and you put a bunch of properties on there, there's like five reviews at first, right? Because it's just a guest that have checked out last month or so. So it's like, you got to go ahead and put a lot of proof in there from other examples, or just really focus on some of the other things we'll talk about today. Professional design video, these are all things that go like, oh, this place obviously isn't a scam. Like, that's what you want, you want to, it's almost like the, the standard to convict someone for murder, like you want to be on the

shadow of a doubt that they've absolutely done everything you can to make the site trustworthy, to make the brand trustworthy. Because then there's not that little voice in the back of their head where they're just like, oh, just book on Airbnb, forget the service fee, to make the brand trustworthy. Because then there's not that little voice in the back of their head where they're just like, oh, just book on Airbnb, forget the service fee, I'll pay it to know for sure that this is a safe thing. You want to eliminate that. You don't want a single echo in the back of their mind of like, oh, this is someone that I might not be able to trust. And I think social provisa is a handy way to kind of get that final outcome for sure. Transparency and honesty, we talked about this before. So kind of flipping the page over to, you know, on the property description side,

this is one thing we picked up previously, which is like sharing some faults. Like I will say that, which is that there's been some studies about this before where people actually don't trust a five out of five rating on a product page or in e-commerce context or in a local business. They actually trust a 4.8 or a 4.75 more than a five,

which is kind of funny and counterintuitive because we have clients that do have fives, five dot os like on a hundred reviews. And I a five, which is kind of funny and counterintuitive because we have clients that do have fives, 5.0s, like on 100 reviews. And I'm like, man, like, what are we supposed to do? Get a bad review on purpose, right? To tap into that psychological bias that we all have. But obviously, it'll happen, right? It's just a matter of time before you get a one-star review. But I think, yeah, being transparent, being honest, and being clear, I think, with people is a great way to build trust. We've had this discussion previously I know,

when we talked about, you know, direct booking websites and conversions and things like that. But these guests, you know, it's so tricky, because the property manager needs the fees and the extra charges in order to be profitable and to make their business run. But the guest hates these fees. So we're very much at odds right now, I would say. And it's, and it has become a little bit of like a hot button topic, you know, it's almost like this, like a political topic where you can

just say it and like throw a grenade room and walk away. We can talk about fees amongst, you know, the guest. And then if you listen to guest perspective, then you listen to homeowner perspective, because there are people that swear up and down, I would never book a vacation rental and I'll never book a quote unquote Airbnb because the fees are so ridiculous. I'm not realizing that really at the end of the day, it's what you pay versus the value that you're getting. And the way that they have to move that money on the ledger is obviously what can be problematic from a presentation standpoint. But certainly if you're advertising,

hey, go book this place for a hundred bucks a night and then you get to the checkout page and it's 500 bucks, that is where people certainly get a little bit upset and go, oh, you guys bait and switch, oh, you guys have these problems. So these are things I think you wanna try to put into the checkout as early as possible or into the pricing as early as possible.

I'm generally speaking a fan of, I'm doing date search on the property page, showing the rates inclusive everything perhaps except taxes. I mean, again, if we're going to copy Airbnb, that might be a safe place to do it in. They do that now where you can toggle it on and showing all the fees and everything in that price. Once you put in dates, not inclusive of taxes. That's the only thing that's added in there. So you know that most areas that's only going to change it and you're like two to 7%, it's not going to be a massive, you know, shift in the net the price. And then, again, from the guest perspective, it's kind of like who cares whether the rent I'm paying is $100 a night or $200 a night, as long as it ends up to be like within my budget, and I'm looking at it and I can understand it. That's great. So I think yeah, putting more transparent pricing in place is a solid way to do it. Being more honest in your property description and just saying like, Hey, this property is near this other thing. Hey, this property has road noise. This property was built in 1880. We did a podcast interview the other day with someone who was renting really old listings. Things will creep. Things will make noise. Like it's part of the charm. But just being honest

about that I think is so important. And not pretending like everything is perfect all the time. There's never any downside. I think that's always something that, you know, people will be drawn towards. I don't know if we talked about this too much. It's something maybe we can come back to down the road, but you'd be shocked on the conversion audit that I came up with a little while ago. Almost every single one I've done so far, I've had to flag this, which is,

where is your refund and cancellation policy on the process, the booking process? Is it in the search results? Probably not. Is it on the property detail page? Often not, but I think it should be. Is it on the checkout? Rarely.

Usually what it is is it's buried within like 10,000 words of some rental agreement that no one's reading. And they just don't know what it is. I think you want to make your cancellation policy or refund policy, all those things very clear, very like simple to understand, almost like I'm working on the new version of the book, as you know, right now, Paul, and I'm using Hemingway app, which forces you to write for almost like fifth grade understanding. Like that's your cancellation policy should be. It's like, you'll get 100% of your money back if you cancel within X number of days. You'll get half your money back if you cancel within X number of days. Like that is just like, you should be able to explain your cancellation refund policies and very clear bullet points.

It shouldn't be a mystery. And then you could actually turn that into like an upsell opportunity, obviously with things like travel insurance. Hey, if you feel like this is not a, you know, want to protect your stay, blah, blah, blah, click here, check this box, and we'll sell you $100 travel insurance policy to make sure you have more coverage for that. But I think those are all things that kind of tie into this, this sense of being transparent and honest about pricing, being transparent and honest about the property itself, and then being transparent and honest about how do how do I handle things like cancellations, like just getting those elephants in the room up front, and not waiting and not

trying to hide those things later on. Because I think that's always going to cause you conversion harm as well. So yeah, any other thoughts hide those things later on. Because I think that's always going to cause you conversion harm as well. So yeah, any other thoughts on those pieces on that category? I mean, I think not only are those like conversion pieces, but ultimately you're proactively working against negative review with any of those things. I mean, it's just the honest representation. How many bad reviews have you seen? Well, it said that they looked here or they did this or they didn't talk

about this or they did. These are just easy ways to just safeguard yourself, future-proof yourself and future-proof your business because again, you get enough negative reviews like that, there's not gonna be a business to be had there. So security features, this is something that I think is really, really critical. And I hope if you're, maybe if you're not online like us all the time, you're not experiencing things like this, but I think we've all run into a website that the SSL certification went down. And boy, is that one of the most intimidating experiences that Google can give you on any given window.

Like it's a big red X, out of here unsafe 99 times out of 100 it is not unsafe. But because that SSL has been as your SSL certificate has has not been renewed or whatever happened. Oh boy, it's like the Walking Dead trailer where it's like don't open. It's like, it's like, Oh, god, I'm not gonna open that thing. It's, I mean, it feels like a quote, like, that old like quarantine, or you can't go in here, something

like that. I'm the like the old computer setup. So please don't let your SSL certification go down. That's something that I mean, this and hopefully that's something that the web's your web services company is taking care of. But my goodness, is that just the worst experience ever. Secure payment options. I know some people are incorporating crypto in, Stripe, PayPal, major credit cards.

Don't connect Venmo, I don't know. There's some things that you should just be doing there. I think on the payment side of things, most people are kind of universal in what they're accepting and again, taking trusted payments. I think crypto is going to be something that at some point people are gonna have to consider or see, how that works in their PNL and budgets and stuff like that

and how much you wanna risk for a future booking or a past, I don't know. That's again, another conversation for another day for us there, but data protection. Another one of again, another conversation for another day for us there. But data protection, another one of those political topics, gotta be careful. We're gonna get we're gonna get the Bitcoin bros like in our comments, like, how dare you guys not not see the future of Bitcoin? You know,

if they're listening, that's fine. Let's get some more volume there. But um, is data protection. This, I feel like it's maybe become maybe we've become numb to this because there have been so many data breaches and reality is that our data is in thousands of hands right now. And I don't like to think about that, but you still have to have that data protection. And you have to have your privacy policies in place. Um, a two P D one C I think that's the,, I mean, the SMS text messaging, that's something that nobody wants to get spammed anymore.

So we need to be careful with people's data. And in reality, you know, it is, you're processing a lot of data within your, I mean, within the PMS of all of these different things, your payment information is the kind of the least of our worries there. So you've got a lot of information. You need to make sure that that data is protected because you don't want to be making headlines for a data breach either. Booking protection, certainly, making sure that you

have guarantees against fraud and misrepresentation. Emergency information, proper safety features, local emergency contacts. Go down the list with Justin for the true emergency information that he thinks should be on a website there as well. And then the secure booking process. PCI compliance is huge. Encrypted transactions are what needs to happen. And again, for the most part, I think we have our payment processing and the vacation rental space is pretty well covered there. If you're going with outside vendors, just make sure you're keeping that in mind. I would never cheap out on the security side of things. If you have to pay a premium for security, it will benefit you in the long term.

But I guess I have you run into anything where you have your websites been compromised? Have you gotten hacked anything like that? Because that's also not a lot of fun that we've dealt with that. That's definitely like WordPress admins that we've worked on before have been hacked. But luckily, I've never had any like really severe like payment or like credit card type issues in the past. So at least you know, knock on wood as I aggressively knocked on this and hope, hope that doesn't happen. Obviously. Yeah, that's

something that's that's been fair there. But you know, it's one of those things, right? We had a client recently, we were talking again about the checkout page, doing some of these audits that we've been doing. And on the checkout page, you know, we we saw like there is this used to be the case all the time. I feel like this has mostly been a solve problem. I don't know if you have this a lot before, but like there's one resource on that page that's HTTP, and then it would break the SSL law. It's like, so it is SSL, like it's a valid

SSL, but there's one resource on that page, like an image or a JavaScript file or something that is not secure. And then that throws all sorts of warnings and certain browsers like, Hey, part of this page is not secure. Part of it is that sort of thing. Um, you, you obviously don't use the system, but I have to pay taxes on this South Carolina like DOR Department of Revenue website, where I click it and it goes to it's secure, like it is secure. I've looked at it before and I paid gosh, knows I paid my share of taxes on that on that platform before. But um, it like looks really like dated, like it's almost like a 1990s web design.

And I'm always like, every time I put my card in there, I'm just always like, worried, like, this doesn't look right. So I think part of it, too, is yeah, like, like a brick, yeah, professional look and feel, you know, it's like, again, understated on the checkout page, you're just feeling like things are very obvious and clear. SSL having some kind of, you know, thing at the bottom, hey, your connections encrypted, use things like green color, use a light green color with a check mark with like bonuses, or

sell little design things that I think you build trust on the on the checkout page. And what a bummer it would be to do all this marketing, all this advertising, get someone to click to put in dates, get them to a property page, they have their credit card in their hand, they're about to book, and then blowing it on the checkout page is just the worst feeling. And yes, I've been there before and had clients with poor converting checkouts. And it just drives me crazy, right? Because it's like so much marketing work is done. And then thousands, tens of thousands of dollars are just sitting there waiting to be booked. And we just can't quite get over the finish line. And a lot of it is these small design elements and design changes on the checkout page.

So could not agree more on that one. Nothing will upset me quicker than a developer who is nonchalant about a checkout page saying it works and then, you know, won't have any, won't take any feedback on the way that that page is laid out or the design elements and stuff like that, because that's so crucial, so critical to the actual business itself is that checkout page. So yeah, a double check, a double review on that, I think makes a lot of sense. I'll touch on two here, maybe the next two that we had, we're kind of talking more about the company itself, like who's behind the company, and then

the website itself. So I think these things kind of tie in together in some respects, so I'll kind of hit on two here and go through this. But again, one of the things that we've added to our audit checklist is having an about us page in the website. So having photos having pictures of the people behind the company, you'd be shocked to often go to website. And I'll be honest, part of this is, is my own bias, we're looking for new business, of course, as always, as many agencies are, and I go to the website, I go to about us. And I'm like, Oh, surely in the about us page, I'll be able to find a picture of the CEO or

someone in the marketing department. And then I'll start to do my outreach, of course, and see if we can work with the company. And all the time, I go there and it's like, welcome to Conrad's Cool Cabin Rentals, but it's not even named something like that. You know, it's like, there's no information I can find about people behind it. And it'll say something like, we've been providing quality vacation rentals since 2020. And we've, you know, look forward to hosting you. It's just the most,

you know, terrible, like car rental style marketing that I see when I use car rentals as a proxy for like, very bad marketing a lot of times because like car rentals are such this utilitarian thing that pretend like they do marketing, but they really don't. So I think having real team photos, pictures of your actual team that's working on the account are working, you know, with you having a company history, having a picture of things like an office make a lot of sense to wave clients who have offices, I might take a picture of that pop that up, put that up there. If they've been to that destination before, and they see a picture of your office on Main Street,

they're gonna go, Oh, yeah, I know where that is. Like it just again, it just confirms their brain that like, yes, they're in the right spot. Yes, they're talking to the right people. And having that some of that information in there. Again, there's kind of a rising trend, right? With things like, you know, these new property managers not having an office. So that's something where it almost divides people a little bit, you know, like the newer companies are like, Oh, why would I need an office? You know, I don't need that same way of doing business anymore, which I kind of get. But if you have it, then flaunt it. You don't even have the physical address listed on the website very prominently.

Obviously have, you know, phone number there, have an email option, you know, a support line there. Some clients do live chat. I'm kind of in the middle on live chat. I think live chat makes a lot of sense if you're manning live chat. I think one thing that the guest expects is that if you're indicating that live chat is there and available to you, you've got to have someone manning it, whatever, keeping an eye on it, right? You can't be having live chat and then never respond to it because that actually harms trust if you're not going to do it that way. So I would say for smaller companies, you probably want to skip the live chat. And then only bigger companies

doesn't make sense to actually have live chat because you could perhaps have the resources lined up for someone to be responding more quickly during business hours, whatever the case may be. I think you nailed it earlier. So I won't beat this one up too much. But you give an example of like, the local chamber has recognized us, here's our little badge, here's their logo, you know, we've donated money to a local, we have a client to work with that donates, I think it's like 1% of their profit every year to Children's Hospital. So we kind of put that on the about us

page, hey, when you book with us, you're supporting a broader mission of helping the Nicholas Children's Hospital. And they talk about that at length. So I think that's a valuable thing to be putting on that kind of about us page. It's personal connection. It's a connection to the community. If you're doing that kind of stuff, talk about it. Yes. Hopefully you're not doing those things strictly for marketing reasons. I'm sure a lot of clients who are going to have broader, more community oriented goals that they're doing. But if you're going to do it, why not talk about it? Why not also put it into your marketing or on your website to be like, yes, I'm here, we're local.

And I think that's a strong thing to kind of lead into. And just kind of pivoting out this and additional thing into like the overall website process. We've talked about these before, so we're gonna have to beat these up. But like website that loads quickly is more trustworthy. I'll say that has very clear and obvious navigation. You know, I can like understand where I need to go very quickly. Having FAQs or commonly asked questions are things that I think can help someone feel more comfortable on a website. Having, we've already kind of talked about this in the checkout page, but just the whole booking process experience should work smoothly. It should, results should come back quickly. I should understand what's happening on the website. All these kind of small UI, UX things do matter quite a bit, I think, in building

trust. And the more you do, it's kind of like they build on each other, like building blocks or little bricks that stack on one on top of one another that comes to a better outcome there, you know, with respect to overall, you know, trust and conversion data that we see on the website side of things. So the about us page sharing more about your company, who you are, why should I trust you? Why? Why are you real business? I think that's kind of one token of it.

And then the other side is the website itself, you know, just having all those UI UX elements died in but anything else that you kind of feel in those two areas? No, I mean, we've again, those, those are two areas that we have beat up many, many times before. They do, they just add into that whole trusting experience. But we will take up back to that about us a little bit. And I think a lot of what you're talking about there is building that emotional connection.

And I think that that's something where a lot of people, when they hear blog, the concept is, oh, it's an SEO play. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, it is an SEO play, but that's really what allows you to take on those storytelling elements. Creating the narratives about the property experience is one thing, but creating the whole experience.

I think that that's something where some of those real bare bones websites that have just home properties, that's it, or in just book, you know, home properties. That's it. Or in about us, contact us. We're missing that element that really drives a lot of the inspiration and ultimately all the way down to the booking itself. It is it's how can you experience, can you imagine yourself having an

experience here and if it's just the property itself, if you're not giving any additional local information, if you're not sharing guest stories, if you're not giving that property a personality, no, again, it's a condo one one of 100 condos that have all looked the same, might be a little more difficult there. But we know that there are a lot of properties out there that have personality that sell themselves on Instagram and social media channels and things like that. So I think

really being able to connect with people at a deeper level, travel is, I wanna say it's like a non-traditional e-commerce where it's not just transactional. There is more that goes into it. Yes, people want to travel. There is that desire to travel, but we have to kind of create, we are, we're creating experience, we're creating moments.

It's travel and hospitality. You can't focus on just one, you can't focus on people just getting to your homes. You have to kind of create that experience that they're going to have and in order for them to envision that and imagine that and then picture themselves in that experience, we have to set that up on the website. So I think that's one area where that content can be difficult to produce because it is, it's more like writing a meal, being an author, writing a book, doing something like that as opposed to just creating website content.

And it's really something that I think, the agencies in this space, we can't create because we haven't experienced it. We haven't been on site. I think that's something where we rely a lot on the property managers and the people who are actually on site experiencing these things to help us tell the story in a more effective way because we can take it three quarters of the way, but it's your local expertise, your local knowledge, your local passion, you have to be passionate to be in these markets. That's really going to

take it that last step of the way there. So I think that obviously, I get passionate about the emotional side of things. But it's true. Like this is, it's, it's not just about the numbers, if people are, yeah, people are going to look for that 199, maybe over the 259, but can they create the experience that they want in either of these? Or is there something else that appeals to them more? So, how do you build that emotional connection

on the websites that you're helping to build and helping to go through like that? I think it can be something that does happen a little bit more on social, but maybe that we haven't mentioned social yet. Maybe that's another thing to layer in here, which is this idea that someone may go to the website, but then if they're not sure,

they're gonna research it in other places. So that goes back to this idea of like, again, if you're really active on social, do you always get a lot of people coming from social media and making a booking and that same browsing session? You do not, but people will often go to social media to back up the fact like, oh, it's a real company. Like here's more pictures, here's more videos,

here's more assets that confirm that. So I would say of everything we've talked about so far, this is the hardest one by far to kind of master or at least to do at a high level because it's often done through video, it's often done through higher touch marketing assets. And I think you can do a lot of work without building that emotional connection to the guest

that will get someone in the right spot. But if you can do this, I think you've gone from competent to professional with respect to building that trust because then someone actually has a reaction. They're not just like, oh, yeah, I'm booking on the site because it's 10% cheaper. Again, if that premise were completely true, then Airbnb would have no market share, Verbo would have no market share. So the guest is not as bothered by the service fee as a lot of people in our

industry seem to think. And that may sound counterintuitive coming from the guy who was like, yes, you should get more direct bookings. But it's just the facts. Like if this 10 or 12% fee was that harmful to someone's bottom line in their wallet when they made a reservation for a vacation on properties, then these companies would not have grown the way that they've grown to hold 70, 80% of market share with respect to OTA bookings versus direct bookings, right? So it's obvious that the guest is not as bothered by the 10%, 20% fee as other people outside looking in may think they are. So I think that's one piece of that puzzle. And then, yeah, you know, but going back to like building that emotional connection,

I think that's when you elevate beyond and you're like, not only do I do I trust the brand, because trust is one thing, right? I trust certain people to like, maybe like watch my kids, for example, but I love people, you know, differently, or I have like a strong emotional reaction to other people differently, where I'm like, oh, this person, but I love people, you know, differently, or I have like a strong emotional reaction to other people differently, where I'm like, oh, this person is like, my best friend, this person is someone that I don't just, you know, trust to do the basic thing for me, but actually have like an affinity towards actually enjoy, you know,

dealing with this company or dealing with this brand. Those are two very different things, you know, when it comes to how positively or how plus that brand association is, I think this is getting to that top level of like, not only do I enjoy, you know, I would be willing to book with this company directly, I actually will seek them out. I will go look for them specifically

when I'm going to make a reservation so that I can get the right outcome, you know, and I'm gonna have an awesome vacation because of the fact that there's awesome people buying the company and so on and so forth. So I think that's fair. Yeah, so I guess flipping over to bad side of that, problem resolutions. I think, yeah, to the bad side of that problem resolutions,

I think, yeah, having to be very clear that this kind of touches on the thing we touched on earlier, which is this idea that there is a problem in the property being honest about it, being transparent, but having sort of like clear and obvious signals on the website that you're going to help with problems. So, you know, you can call our guests 24 seven support line at any time when you're staying with us at eight, four, three, nine, nine, seven, one, two, three, four, right? Like that kind of stuff. You know, giving some additional information on if a problem does pop up, here's how we handle it. Here's our system for, you know, uh,

negative things that happen, how you can report it to us. And we can take action on those things quickly. And I think that's always one of those funny, somewhat counterintuitive things at times when a guest, you know, that we're looking at a review and a guest had a negative experience, but the client handles it very quickly and fix the problem quickly. They actually end up being more of an advocate for the brand. So like they walked in a property and it wasn't cleaned properly. And somehow the cleaner didn't arrive. And obviously that's like a horrifying situation

for a property manager. But if you, if you get a phone call, you pick up right away and you go, Hi, Mr. Manzi, you know, this is Conrad here with Conrad school, Cabot Rentals. How could I best help you? And you go, Oh, the cleaner didn't come, this place is still dirty from the other guests. And I'm horrified. And I act, I'm like, I'm so sorry about that. Paul, go to dinner on me. Here's a $100 gift card, go take your family there. I'm gonna send Cleaner over from my office right now and fix it. That guest actually counterintuitively, sometimes actually is a better, you know, brand association with

the company than someone who like just went through and everything was kind of as expected. So I think you can actually build trust in an ironic way at times through being very quick to react when something does go wrong and being like, oh, something happened, but we're going to take care of it. And then over over delivering on what your promises. Oh, we'll send someone out there and they'll be out there in 45 minutes. And then they're there in 25 minutes. Like that kind of stuff can actually build more trust and transparency and you know, confidence and you're like, oh yeah, something happened, but they took

care of it. I feel the same way about a lot of the stuff that we do on the agency services side. You know, we had a situation recently, we published an ad with a typo, which is super embarrassing. And I hate that it happened. But it happens. And I fixed it within eight minutes of client notifying me. And she's like, Oh, like, and I like apologize. I'm like, I'm really sorry. I don't know how that happened. We have a process for this. Obviously, the process didn't work as intended. But email came in, I fixed it quickly. And

she's like, then they start most people start backpedaling on stereo. They're like, Oh, well, it's no big deal. Like, hey, I appreciate you catching it quickly. It's all good. And you know, it was it was now we're just laughing about it's no big deal. The ad was up for a few minutes. And it was something that was corrected very quickly. So that's kind of that, again, the counterintuitive part about the these whole trust and you know, kind of comfort pieces is, you know, fixing things quickly and having a process for it can be a positive. So that's kind of my take on it. But what do you have any other stories in that vein? Or what's kind of been your experience there?

I actually I was I was the subject of a bad review. And it was Paul. And he is terrible. Like that's it. That was the review from our employer. So you know, it is we got to take a tactful approach to responding to that. And that was great. Probably a Packers fan or something terrible like that. I would certainly assume so. I mean, it was it was definitely a local business. So yeah, I think having the processes is really important because it leaves no room for wiggle room or anything like that.

It leaves no room to interpretation. And in in a very gray, heavily gray area that we're dealing in, making everything as black and white as possible is just so critical. And timeliness, yeah, timeliness is always going to be really important. I think that when something is wrong, time, your concept of time ceases to exist. So one minute feels like an hour and everything just gets accentuated and exacerbated. And yeah, I think that having that process in place just kind of removes and alleviates the potential to again, leave things up to interpretation or leave someone with a bad experience

that could have been prevented there. So yeah, and I mean, I kind of touched on, you know, our last point here, last point, yeah, last point here of a lot of that demonstrated expertise. You are the local authority. I mean, making sure that you are partnering with local business and tourism organizations.

That is, you want to work hand in hand with these people. This is, in a lot of cases, working with these tourism bureaus and things like that is going to help benefit your business, boost it. You might get traffic. You might get more referrals. These are positive things. I think anytime you can partner with even other property management companies, I

think that's something that I think we really do a good job of I think that there is a lot of community within this space, we do work together very well. But let's in some of these markets where you have a very specific offering and you know other property managers who ever has another very specific offering, you feel comfortable, you know, kind of going back and partnering and making sure you are referring back and forth. Because again, not just a good karma side of things, but that will benefit you long term as well. Google Business Profile is sometimes the first and only representation of your website,

of your business that people are going to see. And I think that's only going to be the case further more and more as, again, AI LLMs, AI overviews, all these things. I mean, we've seen different variations of AI overviews where that is what they're giving you. You're giving the first result is a link back to the Google Business Profile. It's not going back to your website. That's like a second or a third click just to get that initial conversion from the search engine

there. So I do. I think that if you're not consistently looking at that information, just to make sure, I mean, you should be checking for reviews regardless. But while Google Plus is not a social media channel by any means, your Google Business Profile can still kind of operate as another version of a social channel and with a lot more exposure because it's showing up in anybody who's doing your branded searches and there.

So, you know, it is anytime you can get press mentions, those are great. That's something that putting a press release out for big, big momentous items that happen, that's not a bad thing. Like use press releases. That more traditional marketing, that is something that does kind of transcend, it brings back to the digital side and kind of connects offline and online a little bit. But it's good to let people know when something good happens to you. I don't think that's ever a bad thing.

Now, again, putting press releases out for things that aren't momentous or newsworthy, it might be a whole other thing there. But there's certainly some value in if you win an award, let people know about it. If you have done something good for the community, let people know about it. If you've partnered with XY and or Z, let people know about it. And professional content partnered with XY and or Z let people know about it and professional content marketing Obviously, we want to make sure I mean, you know when there's good quality content and when there's not So having those high quality destination guides putting together travel tips putting together good quality Blog content having property information that is

Descriptive of the actual property people are going to stay in. These are obviously very beneficial and it does it obviously adds to the trust of the website because if it's not a two paragraph or one paragraph content description of your property, you're probably actually going to include everything that people should would want to know about on the website there. So yeah, it's I think those are again, we everything in that last category we touched on in the previous categories, but anything I missed out on there, anything I left off.

No, I think the subheading name is the way to end it, which is that was our subsection on demonstrating that you are an expert demonstrating that you are the local authority. Everything Paul just mentioned there is that is the okay, I'm saying it when I'm saying it, that's better than not saying it right going back to like the about us page saying that like, here's who we are is a positive thing. The better thing that was like, not just me saying it, here's the proof, here's all the examples, here's all the actual links, I could send you here's all the logos that I could put next to my company. And if you want to do some additional research, some additional checking, you will find that those things turn out to be true. I think that's a good way to end it. Because I think that's probably the most important thing is that whatever you say, if someone can fact check it quickly and go, oh yeah, that's legit. Oh, I see 500 other Google reviews. Then again, we have to extinguish any doubt in their brain anywhere. There can't be 10% of their mind holding back thinking,

I don't know if this is really good because that's going to kill conversion. We've got to be like, no, I know that I'm booking with someone who's trustworthy, who I'm going to be confident in taking out this credit card and potentially spending $10,000, $20,000 without talking to you. Think about that in a certain context. We had a client yesterday who got a $32,000 booking direct with a new guest they'd never dealt with before. That website brought them to a place

where they were willing to buy, spend as much money as some people spend on a car in order to book a week, where it's like 10 days, at a really high end vacation rental. And that's amazing, but it's not something that should be taken for granted. And you got to do a lot of steps right to get there. And that's amazing, but it's not something that, you know, should be taken for granted. And you gotta do a lot of steps right to get there. So my last thought, I will kind of end on this thought, is that unfortunately though, trust is kind of like,

it has to be a chain of events that all line up to another. And if you have a little weak chain there that breaks, you know, you can have an issue. So like the checkout page example is a good one, not having about us information, having bad reviews, having poor social proof. These are all things that you can do with all the other things, right?

And then that chain will break. So you have to like get those links connected together and all the way through in order to have success. But I think that, you know, you can do it. And obviously we've, you know, we work with clients every day who have figured out how to do this stuff at a high level. It's always, I think, something that you can improve upon, which is why we did today's episode. So I'll get Paul, we put a bow on this one. Hope that your listener had an awesome time. If you had an awesome time, made it all over the end, leave us a review go to your podcast app of choice iTunes Spotify click follow click subscribe that way you get a

future episode so that you can check out new stuff coming in and leave us a five-star review we're looking for more reviews always on the hunt for those we appreciate anyone that has the time to leave some additional ones there thank you so much and we'll catch you on the next episode have an awesome day